A fly fisherman stands in the middle of a river, whipping his fishing line back and forth as if he were an artist painting a masterpiece. It’s a natural movement, and the 8-foot rod acts like an extension of his person, similar to the weapon he once held fighting in the Iraq War.
A whistling sound echoes as he sends the weightless fly soaring into the clear water where hungry trout await its descent. The trick, some say, is launching the lure with dead-eye accuracy. “It is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o’clock,” writer Norman Maclean explained in A River Runs Through It.
The art of fly-fishing is being perfected on the Lower Mountain Fork River that flows through southeastern Oklahoma by veterans from Project Healing Waters North Texas. The local organization is a branch of a larger nonprofit, Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans.
“There are an infinite number of lessons that rivers teach us,” Matt Symthe, a veteran, wrote on the nonprofit’s website. “Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing works to give [injured veterans] something sustainable — something positive — that they can carry with them on their journey home, instead of the weight that has followed them back from war.”
Former Gunnery Sgt. Lew Duckwall, a Lake Dallas resident, is the man behind Project Healing Waters North Texas. He takes a group of wounded warriors throughout the year to the Lower Mountain Fork River, located at the foothills of the Kiamichi Mountains, to spend three days lost in the beauty of Beavers Bend State Park.
“I want people to know,” said Duckwall, “that the person who started this, who will be with them on every outing, understands what they’ve been through because I’ve been through it, too.”
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Like Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge, Duckwall has a hard-edged presence shaped in part by the Iraq War, Operation Desert Storm, and a skirmish in the ’80s in Central America that he’d rather not discuss. But there’s also something humble about him, seen as he slowly made his way toward a sitting room in the home of a Project Healing Waters volunteer in Corinth, where he discussed the goals of his new chapter that he began early last year.
It’s a humbleness of a person who’s nearly lost everything yet rediscovered his purpose, a newfound respect toward life, you might say, or an awareness that comes only from experiencing tragedy.
Duckwall comes from a patriotic family. His grandfather served in World War II, and his uncle fought in the Vietnam War. He had always admired people who served their country during times of war, so he joined the military a year after he graduated from high school in 1979.
“I’m an old-timer,” he said.
He became a combat engineer, and during the course of his 20-plus-year military career, he’s seen more action in one lifetime than most people can imagine. He’s received 19 awards and decorations, and it was this experience that led him to Iraq in 2002 as part of team that would explode minefields, build bridges and complete other tasks that he rarely discusses with civilians.
Yet it wasn’t a bomb or a bullet that ended his military career. He was electrocuted during a mission in Iraq. He won’t provide details of what led to his electrocution, but when the electricity entered his body, he said, it had no place to escape because of his military gear.
“Basically, it just went from one major organ to another,” Duckwall explained, “and when it decided it had done enough damage, it moved on. By the time the electricity was done with me, it had discombobulated everything.”
Duckwall suffered everything from a spinal cord injury to partial right-side paralysis. He had to have both shoulders completely rebuilt, and a pacemaker installed in his chest. And like many wounded warriors returning home from the Middle East, he also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
“I am the classic PTSD role model,” said Duckwall, who was angered not only because of the physical capabilities he lost but also because of the way the military treated him when he was told he was no longer needed.
“It was like they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough,” he said. “I was very angry at the military, very angry at God. I was angry at anyone who loved me because I didn’t know how they could love me when I didn’t love myself.”
Duckwall returned home to his new wife, Nicole, a flight nurse in the Air Force whom he married before leaving for the Middle East, and his children, but he wasn’t the same man. He was broken and lost the will to live, which led to him lashing out at his family and attempting suicide multiple times.
“I was so accomplished with what I had done in the military,” he said, “and then you come back and you’ve got someone who helps you with some of the most basic things you do in life. You feel childlike, and then you’re frustrated because you remember what it is like when you were able to do those things. Instead of being grateful for being alive, you’re angry for what you don’t have — it’s almost like a monster is inside of you that’s released.”
Thankfully, his wife is more hardheaded than himself, he said, because she loved him enough to get him through his depression.
“It didn’t sound like love sometimes,” said Duckwall who smiled when thinking about his family. “I am not a hero, but if there is a hero in my family, it is my wife. She dealt with it. A lot of people would have turned their backs on me because it’s hard to put up with someone who is that angry.
“She did it, and so did my children. They showed a lot of courage. They never gave up.”
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It was a fly-fishing trip to Sun Valley, Idaho, with a group called Higher Ground Sun Valley in 2009 that changed Duckwall’s life forever and led to his formation of Project Healing Waters North Texas.
Higher Ground Sun Valley is a nonprofit organization that helps disabled people, including injured service members, through adaptive recreation programs. Through programs in skiing, snowboarding, fly-fishing, kayaking, whitewater rafting, paddleboarding, martial arts, swimming, rock climbing, mountain biking and many other activities, the organization helps participants build physical and social skills.
At first, Duckwall didn’t want to board a plane to Idaho to participate in fly-fishing, but he said he was blessed to have Mike Chesne, a regional coordinator for Project Healing Waters, who was patient with him.
Duckwall grew up fly-fishing in upstate New York. His father, Lawerence, learned to fly-fish from his grandfather, and he became a famous fly fisherman and fly tier on the East Coast. His father was so well known in the sport that he went to China to teach people there how to fly-fish.
“If you’ve ever watched the River Runs Through It, that was my life, except for dad has never been confused for an Episcopalian minister, I guarantee it,” he said.
Standing in the middle of a river was exactly what Duckwall needed to heal and realize he could own his life again. “There is nothing more serene or more healing than to be in the middle of a river,” he said. “It’s physically very soothing and nonthreatening.”
Duckwall was so changed by the experience that he decided he wanted other veterans to experience what he’d felt standing in the middle of the river. He created Project Healing Waters North Texas with the goal of sharing the same experience with his armed service brothers and sisters in Denton County.
Teaming up with the Dallas Fly Fishers and Fort Worth Fly Fishers groups, Duckwall held the organization’s first outing in May 2013 at Beavers Bend State Park in southeastern Oklahoma.
“I was shocked and humbled by how beautiful it was,” he said. “It’s not just the area, but the people there are incredible.”
Some of those people include Linda and Jesse King, owners of Three Rivers Fly Shop in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. They’d been talking about finding a way to give back to veterans who’d given so much fighting for freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they weren’t sure how they would repay that kind of sacrifice.
“I don’t know if it was divine intervention,” said Linda King, “because Lew walked through the door a couple of days later.”
Linda King contacted Harris Group HCE, a home auxiliary group in Broken Bow, and asked if they could help the veterans who were coming to fly-fish. The group was honored to help and offered to cook them a home-cooked meal during their stay at Beavers Bend.
The Kings were also able to get cabin owners to provide lodging at no cost to the veterans and fly-fishing guides to volunteer to teach them the ancient art and help them to relax — a charge that isn’t as difficult as one might think in the middle of a woodland paradise.
“It’s the serenity of the place,” Linda King explained. “[The veterans] are able to forget what’s around them. It gives them three days to help them forget and reflect on what’s really important. They also see how much they are appreciated.”
The trip was a success and has led to eight more outings since May 2013.
“It was the way the people embrace you,” Duckwall said. “They thank you for what you’ve done.”
A few weeks ago, Project Healing Waters North Texas held its first all-female fly-fishing outing. Nine female veterans representing four out of the five armed services attended with nine members of the Texas Women Fly Fishers, an organization that promotes teaching women how to fly-fish.
They spent three days and 20 hours on the river chasing trout, and each participant caught at least a fish per day, and some of them caught multiple fish each day.
“As I watched them, I could see the trust building as they shared stories, experiences and trials,” Duckwall wrote to Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing. “It is my humble opinion that bringing vets together without any conscious thought of the origins of their wounds is no different than a firefighter fighting a fire by pouring water on the flames and not the combustible materials where the fire originated.”
CHRISTIAN McPHATE can be reached at 940-566-6878 and on Twitter at @writerontheedge.
PROJECT HEALING WATERS
Project Healing Waters North Texas will have its next outing in early December. For more information, contact the group on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ProjectHealingWatersNT or email Lew Duckwall at lduckwall@charter.net.
